National Radiology Quality Assurance Service Launched

March 31, 2011 – The first national quality assurance (QA) service for outsourced radiology reading services has been announced. The Peer Review Program, by USARAD.com, assists imaging facilities in achieving and maintaining American College of Radiology (ACR) accreditation.

The new program is open to individual radiologists, hospital radiology departments, imaging centers, IDTFs, mobile imaging providers and multi-specialty physician groups.

ACR accreditation is now mandated by many payors, including Medicare. Individual radiologists certified by the American Board of Radiology after 2004 also can utilize this QA program to custom-tailor their individual Practice Quality Improvement (PQI) projects required for the Maintenance of Certificate (MOC).

“Meeting full QA requirements is often beyond the reach of small and solo radiologist practices,” said Mary Daubert, CAO of USARAD.com. “We have successfully implemented this program internally as well as with select clients and we are now offering it nationwide. The program was developed to be extremely cost effective and efficient and can be implemented in a matter of days.”

With an existing national network of board-certified radiologists and advanced technology, the company has the infrastructure to offer this program on a national level. The program will use a random sampling of radiology reports and grade them on a six-point scale on various imaging and reporting parameters. Additionally, USARAD.com board certified and fellowship trained reviewing radiologists will provide feedback on a reading radiologist’s style and depth of reporting as well as such medicolegal aspects as communication with referring physicians. This service will enhance the practice’s performance and benefit individual radiologists in measuring improvement on a quarterly or annual basis.

“The primary goals of the program include improvement in quality of interpretations, client satisfaction, communication with referring physicians, overall physician performance as well as reduction in errors,” said Michael Yuz, M.D., MBA and founder of USARAD.com. “Ultimately, this will make an important difference in patient care and enhance outcomes.”